Expert advice on cybersecurity, cybersafety and cybercrime. Using real incidents, I explain why cyber risks occur, what form they take, and how they affect cybercitizens as individuals, employees, citizens and parents. Opinions expressed in this blog represent my personal views

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Thursday, September 5, 2013

Facebook's
model for organic advertising turns Facebook users into endorsers for
advertised products through sponsored stories. Sponsored stories are messages
coming from friends about them engaging with a Page, app or event that a
business, organization or individual has paid to highlight so there’s a better
chance people see them.

Facebook
does not notify users that a simple action such as liking a page would be
translated into an endorsement. A cyber citizen would be embarrassed if the
liked product was of a personal nature, like a sex toy.

A recent
court case won by privacy advocates on behalf of an estimated 100 million Facebook
users whose profiles were used in sponsored stories has ordered Facebook to pay
20 million dollars in compensation which amounts to 10-15 dollars per litigant.
In previous court cases of this nature most of the money went to charities due
to the challenges involved in distributing small amounts to a large number of
people.

Facebook
will still be able to use your endorsement in sponsored stories subject to Facebook
notifying you as we'll as introducing privacy protections which allow users to
specify actions that they would not like to be used as endorsements in
sponsored stories.

Cyber
citizens should be ready to modify their privacy settings and above all should
consider the implications of being an unintentional endorser before they like a
post or page.

Sunday, September 1, 2013

As i write this blog looking out of the aircraft window, 36000 feet above the Arabian Sea dense rain clouds stretch for miles creating one of the most beautiful landscapes I have ever seen. The beauty is apparent because we are flying above the clouds and not through it. For those short lived moments when we did fly through clouds our vision was narrowed by the brilliant white fog and rattled by sporadic turbulence.

Living in cyber space is akin to flying through dense clouds. Beyond the narrow perspective of your browser window, there is very little that a normal user comprehends. To use electricity, we do not need to know how it is generated but we all somehow know that electricity can kill. Cyberspace is slightly different, we all know how to use cyberspace but few know its threats and risks.

Why, because until now cyber space has not killed anyone, it has behaved like the proverbial pickpocket and stolen a few hundred dollars no more. Or perhaps it is because our attention is on more physical crimes such as rape, murder and other sorts of violent crime. Or maybe it is because big businesses make more money from selling physical security equipment such as guns, X-ray machines and metal detectors than from computer security software.

Whatever be the reason, we should not forget that slowly and steadily this world is moving towards complete reliance on inter-networked information systems. Everything we take for granted will be setup on an integrated global networks. A network in which the knocking down of a single node will rattle a few more. As data volumes rise the increasing complexity of managing information estates will see a fair share of unintentional and intentional glitches. Some will hurt if essentials like electricity, hospital and communication are downed. On the anvil are driverless cars and robots with the ability to out think humans.

Mankind is entering a new age.
The Internet has also changed the social fabric of the entire world through it ability to allow individuals rapidly disseminate audio and video content based on localised or personalised events and ideologies. Unlike the real world cyberspace has a wide reach and long lived memories. Whatever information is put there stays there and can be seen by many others. Since social networking has become a facet of everyday life, we tolerate some of its problems like cyber bullying, defamation and so on.
Today, we are in a primitive stage. We are affected by risks but try and cope with it in the old fashioned way. The seniors among us may not understand it as well as children do. But this will change. We need to alter our lens to what is to come, a new age with new requirements and new rules. The learning of the past which have helped us to frame laws and rules of conduct will provide us a foundation but cannot be applied as it is or even with minor tweaks. We need to think afresh.

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Facebook recently released its first halfyearly Global Government Requests Report,
which transparently details government requests for user data by country, no of
requests, no of user/accounts specified and the percentage of requests complied
with.

I have tabulated the released data along with the number
of Facebook users in each of the countries which made100 or more user/account
data requests.

These 22 countries
made on average 43 user account data requests per million Facebook users within
their country.

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Cyber Safety is the measures an Internet user
takes to prevent against accidental harm and to avoid known risks through the
use of the Internet. Cyber safety deals with predictable cyber risks such a
ransom ware, cyber bullying, email scams, defamation, sexting, loss of privacy
and loss of personal information.

Internet users will at
minimum need to be familiar with cyber risks and the best practices to combat
them. Best practices outline precautions from risks that seek the active and
knowing participation of the victim such as phishing, get rich scams, cheap
pharmaceutical products, responding to trolls and cyber bullying.

There are several ways
to let someone spy into your home. The easiest is using a non internet baby monitor
which allows neighbors to tune into, much like a radio.

A man in the US found
out that he was being watched when his neighbor
informed him that video and audio from his son’s nursery was showing up on his
monitor whenever it was set to the same channel. The microphone on the monitor
was so sensitive it even picked up conversations occurring in rooms outside the
nursery. Both used the same product and believed the product to be secure when
they bought it.

While purchasing
wireless products it is important to evaluate the authentication and encryption
mechanism in place to ensure that no third party can snoop onto the audio and
video feed. The mechanism should provide a level of difficulty to break into.
Monitors with long range may appear attractive but the feeds can also be captured by your neighbors
or by people in a car outside. It may pose a health hazard for your infant.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

The
revelations of Edward Snowden have had a direct impact on American public
cloud service providers. According to a recently released survey by the cloud
security alliance, 56% of the non US firms are rethinking their decision on the
use of US based public clouds. According to Gartner, the public cloud business is a 131
billion dollar market, with a growth rate of 18.5%. American firms are in
the lead, with the most market share.

Rivals in
other countries are in the process of catching up and lobbying with their
governments to create national standards and force companies to use in country
clouds. These efforts have now received a direct boost. Data sovereignty
concerns have always been a significant issue. Non US firms may shift to in
country clouds and hosting providers, reducing the revenue to American firms
and paring their lead. While the global public cloud
market revenue may not be affected the confidence of businesses in public clouds
has been jolted yet again.

About 90% of
public cloud services are used to advertise, offload business
processes, and purchase software as a service. Most companies unwittingly pass
on sensitive data through cloud email, use of collaboration platforms for
conferencing and file transfer services. While companies may continue to use
some of these services to gain from their cost benefits, strict policies around
the type of information that can be shared will need to be put in place.Companies would shift their investments into
private clouds, and exercise greater caution on the type of applications they
source from cloud providers or host onto public infrastructure.

For years, we
have all lived with the knowledge that our telephone conversations can be
snooped upon by governments to provide an unfair advantage to local companies.
A few countries are openly suspected of doing so. This has not stopped us from
making calls, but most firms have put in place mechanisms to reduce the
risk.The same example is true for our
use of email. Public cloud service should follow the same pattern.

Cyber citizens’
who use cloud services for social networking, email and other types of
collaboration platforms have limited choices. These are to

1.Lobby
governments for more transparency. This option is suited for those individuals
who use cloud services in their country of nationality.

2.Believe
that the government has better things to do than to snoop on them. This may be
true for a vast majority of cyber citizens, but untrue for some of the sources
they rely upon such as journalists and whistle blowers

Monday, August 26, 2013

Cyber
Security is defined as the set of processes, practices and technologies to
protect computer assets from intentional cyber attacks by malicious entities
like hackers, cyber criminals and pranksters. Typical attacks exploit
vulnerabilities in computer software, use fake websites to trick individuals
into giving away their credentials, and the use of sophisticated malware to
cause harm to personal data, and to steal information and credentials.

For home
networks and computers, cyber security at minimum requires the use of updated
versions of software, firewalls, anti malware suites and strong passwords on
WIFI and other network devices.

Sunday, August 25, 2013

Cell phones disguised
as car fobs and made with very low metal content to smuggle into prisons have
hit the market. Prisons are not the only area where cell phones are restricted.
IT/ITES companies, government, and
defense establishments where sensitive information is processed normally
restrict cellphones, storage and other communication devices which have the
ability to exfiltrate data electronically or through the use of inbuilt cameras.
Metal detectors and physical searches detect objects like USB’s and cellphones.
Plasticphones disguised as innocuous
items make detection harder.

Statistics on
the smuggled cell phones in jails reveal the severity of the problem and highlight
the relative ease with which a prison inmate could obtain one. One Indian jail
reported finding 4 cellphones a week, Britain reported finding 7000 cellphones
a year while a routine sweep pick up between 12 to 120 cellphones. Across the
world there are two main avenues for phones to get into jails; through prison
officials who sell them at exorbitant prices to prisoners or by inserting
phones into balls which are thrown over prison walls.

Hard core prisoners
use phones for extortion, terror, intimidation or to run their crime syndicates,
while others call friends and family, check the news on their court cases and
for social networking. Phones are hidden in plastic cases and buried into
toilet shifts, or in some unusual cavities such as in the case of a prisoner’s who
hid it in his rectum. Smaller phones with low metal content would be useful to
evade sweeps made in prison.

Jamming of phones
is hotly as it hampers emergency calls made by guards. In India, jammers fail
to work as inmates allegedly used salt to render them defunct.

Phones will
continue to be found in jails unless the financial incentive to smuggle them in
is removed, and officials who do so are severely punished. Their active
connivance not only helps the phones to get in, but also helps charge them.

Cell phone
providers provide records on phones transmitting from a given location.
Monitoring phone records from jail premises could provide useful clues of the
cell phones operating from within.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Megan Taylor
Meier was a vulnerable child diagnosed with an attention deficit disorder and depression,
and had self-esteem issues regarding her weight. At the age of fourteen she
took her own life after falling victim to an online hoax set-up up by two adult
neighbors, the mother of her friend and her temporary employee, in retribution
for her allegedly spreading gossip about her daughter.

They set-up an
fictitious account of a 16-year-old male
named "Josh Evans" who built
up an online relationship with Megan, that help here lift her spirits. Megan
was driven to suicide by a series of messages designed to end the hoax. In the
last few days, the tone of the messages changed. "Josh" stated in a
message sent to Megan: "I don't know if I want to be friends with you
anymore because I've heard that you are not very nice to your friends" and
"Everybody in O'Fallon knows who you are. You are a bad person and
everybody hates you. Have a shitty rest of your life. The world would be a
better place without you." Meier responded saying, "You’re the kind
of boy a girl would kill herself over" and hanged herself shortly after.

The adults who
created the fake account and engineered the emotional harassment, thought it
was a “joke” and did not foresee any serious consequences.

Although Megan
passed away in 2006, I chose to recall this episode because the latest
statistics (2012) released by the Indian crime bureau showed that 16% of all
cases of online crimes were committed by neighbors who eve teased, settled
scores, took revenge or were jealous. In India neighbors are aware of each others personal secrets making it easy to denigrate,
defame, or harass victims among their friends and community.

It is a shameful
yet sad reality that some take sadistic pleasure in online torture. The neighbor
you confide too may in reality be the perpetrator of the online harassment.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

The latest
statistics on Indian Cyber Crime released by the National
Crime Record Bureau for 2012 show that there has been a 60% growth in cyber
crime cases with an increase from 2095 cases in 2011 to 3354 in 2012. 80% of
these crimes were committed by adults in the age group 18 to 45.

The crime
bureau categorization of the crimes by motive highlights that financial motives
and eve teasing are the top two segments of cyber crime in India

Interestingly, neighbors happened to be the chief suspect in most of crimes.

Saturday, August 17, 2013

Wikipedia defines a troll as “someone who posts inflammatory,
extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as a forum, chat
room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional
response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion”. The main
objective of a troll is to intentionally lure a victim into a pointless or
annoying discussion by responding to rude questions or statements. The troll
amuses himself while the unsuspecting victim is emotionally riled up.

In my Best
of the Web Cyber Safety Videos we pay tribute to an
informative video by College Humour on how Internet Trolls behave online.

If this video fails to appear for the lack of shockwave or flash
support in your browser. Go to YouTube "Internet
Troll Bridge "

What would
happen if your predictable life suddenly became unpredictable? We lost power,
communications and ran out of water for an extended period of time as cyber
terrorists had hacked into and shut down our supply grids. This wartime scenario
can be replayed over and over again in the financial sector, nuclear plants,
traffic control and in many other sectors.

In my Best
of the Web Cyber Safety Videos we pay tribute to an
informative security awareness video by the CPNI titled “Staff Security
Awareness”

If this video fails to appear for the lack of shockwave or flash
support in your browser. Go to YouTube "Staff
Security Awareness”

Thursday, August 15, 2013

When
I read Leah Parson’s emotive description of the pain, and anguish which drove
her daughter to suicide after persistent victimization by former friends and
school mates and the failure of the Canadian judicial system to help her.

She
wrote “The Person Rehtaeh once was all changed one dreaded night in November
2011. She went with a friend to another’s home. In that home she was raped by
four young boys…one of those boys took a photo of her being raped and
decided it would be fun to distribute the photo to everyone in Rehtaeh’s school
and community where it quickly went viral. Because the boys already had a “slut” story, the
victim of the rape Rehtaeh was considered a SLUT.”

The
case was complicated in many ways; there was no way to prove rape as the
compliant was registered a week later and the picture circulated online was of
an obscene act, but did not show their faces. Her mother writes “Rehtaeh was
suddenly shunned by almost everyone she knew, the harassment was so bad she had
to move out of her own community to try to start anew in Halifax. The bullying
continued, her friends were not supportive.”

Two
of the perpetrators were caught and recently charged with child pornography for
distributing a sexually implicit image of a child, the only charge that the
police could legally raise.

To
me, a young girl was being victimized by a large number of young people in a
small community, over a period of time using social networks and isolation. This case is similar to the Steubenville Rape
case where a rape conviction was made against two juvenile footballers.
Alcohol, drugs, peer pressure, lack of parental supervision, and an unconscious
victim were the chief ingredients in this crime.

Social
media was used extensively to tweet or post about the incident. Immediately
after the crime, perpetrators bragged and shared obscene videos and picture
online, denigrating the victim among friends and the local community.During the trial, social media was used
to intimidate, harass and threaten the victim; her supporters, bloggers,
parents and others who supported the case. During the trial by social media,
these comments were witnessed and supported by a large number of passive
bystanders. Knowingly or unknowingly, by not taking a stand and condemning
the slander, they and their parents became active participants in
support of the ongoing victimization. Their inactivity fuelled the victimization as the perpetrators thought they were on the winning side.Most of the bystanders had the
power to end the victimisation, there and then by a single comment. But none did.

Parents
should educate their
children not be party to rumours and gossip online. To fight for morally
right causes. To be able to walk away or take a stand against bullies or other
popular students who behave immorally. Only then, will be make cyber space safe
for our children. It should be noted that social media was effectively and positively used to
harness support for the victim, their families and bring about changes in law.

We can always ask ourselves some of the questions below:

1.What role did the parents of Rehtaeh’s
classmates and school mates who supported the bullying do? Did they advise
their children against passing judgments and took part in the victimization?

2.The boys who committed the offence,
seemed least apologetic and in fact appear to aggressively prove their
innocence. What drove them to brand and harass Rehtaeh? What role do their
parents play in this entire incident? Passiveor Active?

3.Should the law reform in line with the
new age or simply try to apply old laws to the online world.

4.Is parental supervision of their
children moral conduct online lacking?

5.Do children not understand the
implication of sexting and that it is illegal?

6.Do children not understand the
implication of non consensual sexting?

7.What role do social networks play in
reducing use of their network for such victimization?

Thursday, August 8, 2013

The NSA PRISM
revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden has blown the lid of one of the
largest international surveillance operations of all times. The operation
collects information called “metadata” which is an audit trail of all the
online activities by cybercitizens.

Once a target
has been identified, using the metadata it would be possible to conduct a
detailed inspection into the targets email and other such content stored on web properties with
interfaces to the PRISM system.

The
collection and use of this information is not subject to authorization by
courts and does not seem to be supervised in any way. Foreign citizen have no
rights whatsoever as network traffic or
content on foreign soil is considered to the property of that nation which
legitamises the spying. This is the reason why the global optic fibre network is tapped at every country
which has a landing point and the technology to do so.

Most at risk
are journalists, politicians, businesses with global interests, businesses involved
in competitive negotiation on global bids, bureaucrats and diplomats involved
in policy negotiation.

From the
revelations of the US PRISM network by the Guardian, it seems that either access
to the network or its surveillance points are located at many sites outside the
United States. It also proves the adage that in politics there are no permanent
friends or permanent enemies, as these surveillance networks spy more on friends
than foe.There are
many uses for surveillance networks, but history has shown that these are used
primarily for economic and political reasons rather than than for national
security.

All that Snowden have achieved is to make cyber citizens aware, but in no way
has it resulted in the dismantling of the surveillance apparatus. Most
countries actually prevent cyber citizens from using secure technologies leaving them
wide open to surveillance by many governments and jeopardizing a nation’s
economic interests.

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Cyber harm
affects Cybercitizens through monetary losses, reputational damage, emotional
distress, lost jobs, higher product cost and lost business opportunities. In an
era of increased digitization most Cybercitizens accept or tolerate these
losses as part and parcel of the use of Internet as the benefits far outweigh
the risks.In many cases Cybercitizens
are unaware of the risk until they fall victim to cyber crooks.

Monetary
losses

Cyber crooks
use a wide variety of con tricks to steal money from cybercitizen through email
scams, frauds and identity theft. Reports estimate that the average loss to an
individual is around 500 us $. A part of these losses may be compensated by
credit card companies or financial institutions which absorbs them as the cost
of doing business.

Reputational
damage

Professionals
are most affected by online comments made by customers, foes or even
competitors on their professional capabilities. These turn away prospective customers,
dilute eminence and result in lost income. Most of the reputational websites
lack methods to verify the trueness of online comments as the identity of the
person who made the comment is not known.

Emotional
distress

The pain of
falling victim to scamsters, trolls, cyber bullies, pedophiles and other
nasties online who indulge in personal attacks as well as of ex partners and
friends posting private pictures online cannot be easily quantified. At the
very least, vulnerable individuals and children have to spend for medical aid.

Lost jobs

Corporate
espionage results in the loss of intellectual property and business
confidential information which leads to increased competition from foreign
manufacturing firms. Such competition reduces the profitability of businesses
resulting in job cuts which forces individuals into unemployment or lower
paying jobs. Estimates suggest that for each billion of lost revenue around
5000 jobs are made redundant.

Higher
product cost

Purchasing goods
online normally saves money and time. A lack of trust in making payments online
restricts the use of the Internet for ecommerce. The only alternative is to
make purchases from stores at a higher rate

Lost business

The entry
barrier to a small business is typically know how and relationships not
capital. If a competitor is able to hack customer lists, buying and selling
rates as well as manufacturing and assembly plans, a competitive business could
easily be set up.

Thursday, August 1, 2013

Finally,
Twitter has announced that it would insert a Report Abuse button for every
tweet just like Facebook does for every post.
Caroline Criado-Perez successful campaign
to replace Charles Darwin's image with Jane Austen's on a British banknote
resulted in a barrage of Twitter replies full of hate, rape and death threats.

Realizing
that the abuse reporting mechanism in Twitter was not effective to stem the
harassment, she raised an online petition currently signed by over 1,00,000
users to pressure twitter into modifying its abuse mechanism.

Twitter cited
the volume of tweets as the prime reason why its abuse mechanism was not on each
tweet. But, it seems to me that it was an attempt to save costs. Putting a report
abuse button would vastly increase the manual and automated efforts needed to
review these tweets and take appropriate action. Twitter was undoubtedly
worried about the possibility of millions of tweets being marked for review. We
would be too, for a very different reason if this was the case.

Caroline’s
effort is a great example of how citizens who avail free services from social
networks can exert pressure to make these sites protect their personal privacy
and security. Free services are a misnomer as our fee is paid through the ad
revenue they derive.

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

A troll's main objective is to intentionally lure a victim into a pointless or
annoying discussion by responding to rude questions or statements. The troll
amuses himself while the unsuspecting victim is emotionally riled up.

The anonymous
quote “Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level, then
beat you with experience” represents the soundest advice when dealing with an
Internet Troll.

Remain calm
and civil; if you lose your temper, the troll wins.The troll may alert other trolls to join
together to harass the victims. Assume the perpetrator is having a bad day and
respond as such. A few good words cost nothing but are priceless.

If this does
not work then ignore or better still block the person and if the comments cross
the line of civility then report it to the police.

Sunday, July 28, 2013

ATM skimming
is a form of low value financial fraud, wherein cyber crooks clone ATM cards
using an ATM Skimmer; a device which is attached onto an ATM to capture a victims
magnetic stripe data and pin.

In my Best
of the Web Cyber Safety Videos we pay tribute to an
informative video by the Queensland Police Department on ATM Skimming and what
could be done to detect tampered ATM. If this video fails to appear for the lack of shockwave or flash
support in your browser. Go to YouTube " Fiscal the Fraud Fighting Ferret: Episode 3 - ATM
Skimming
"

Saturday, July 27, 2013

In India, the
use of the Internet and Social Networking is predominant among the more literate
middle classes, and it is quite unlikely to find semiliterate domestic helps
using Facebook. Therefore, it was with a great degree of shock and trepidation
that a retired couple and their adult children woke up to Facebook friend
requests from a crook who stole Rs 25 Lakhs (50,000 USD) from their home, after
sedating them with a spiked sweetmeat.

Reclining comfortably
on a double bed in a white vest, the thief appeared to mock their efforts to
track him down. He was quick to change his phone SIM card to prevent the police from
tracing him, and seems to be able to procure SIMs without ID’s or using fake ids. The
thief’s attempt caught the eye of the local newspaper that promptly splashed
the article on its front page, with his photograph.

Catching the
eye of the people and the public mocking of law enforcement efforts to track
him will narrow his chances of escaping the noose of the law. Use of
information technology always leaves a trail of breadcrumbs, and I would not be
surprised if our cyber cops are hot on their scent.

Out of
curiosity, I did a little digging of my own to find out what type of person he
was, his friends and his posts. It was not without surprise that the thief and
his friends were clueless about the privacy settings on FaceBook and their
default settings allowed public access to all their profiles.I was not motivated to undertake an in-depth
study of this information, but the little I saw convinced me that there was
quite a bit going on. Quite a few profiles appeared to be ofgay’s openly soliciting sex, other thieves
posting that the law was after them, and perhaps a few educated people who must
be ashamed that they can be seen on his friend list.

The thief
also has set-up three profiles under the same name with a different set of
friends, and posts in English. In India, a person who can write and speak in
English, a second language would have had a school education. The use of computers,
internet and Facebook indicates a fair amount of literacy.

The daily
described the thief as a computer savvy domestic help, but it seems more likely
to be a case of an educated professional thief posing as a domestic help.

Either way,
it seems more important to set our privacy settings on Facebook to prevent
people other than our friends from viewing our timelines and making our posts
readable to an extended set of friend of friends, restrict information on
wealth and travel, and not accept strangers as friends.

To be a
friend with the crook on Facebook is a sure blot on one's reputation bringing along undue attention from other friends, the law and employers.

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

The word
“online censorship” conjures images of a autocratic government enacting laws to
curb a netizens online freedom of speech and expression. The slightest mention
of the phrase instantly raises the hackles of interest groups, hacktivists and many
Internet users.

In the midst
of the polarized debate on free speech, the rationale behind Internet
Censorship and on whose responsibility it lies is left unquestioned.It is assumed that censorship is from
governments and cyber citizens have no role to play in it. This notion is
flawed as censorship by cyber citizens is urgently needed to control abusive
and inappropriate content by other cybercitizens. The unattractive alternative is
to be policed by the government or law enforcement using loosely defined laws,
which are subject to misuse.

Cybercitizens
can censor in two ways.

Firstly, by
instantly and collectively reprimanding objectionable online comments made by
cyber bullies, trolls, racists and fanatics as and when they write such posts.
Cybercitizens cannot remain mere bystanders and have to step in to actively
demonstrate that such behavior is not appreciated. Cyber citizens must own the
responsibility to evolve and build an ethical online social order based on a
collective consciousness; one, which can be taught in school and passed to the
next generation of digital users.

Secondly, the
institutions that collect, store and disseminate user generated contents such
as social networking platforms and websites must be coerced to actively
implement measures to reduce net anonymity, filter objectionable content, and
remove hateful ideology by acting on reports by net users. Most of these sites
do not play a role in moral or ethical policing and remain protected by laws
which pass on the accountability to users. Many of whom, are anonymous or even
in other countries where they are safe from prosecution. Free online platforms
sustain themselves and their stock valuation by being able to mine a user’s
behavior for ad revenue. This motive allows them to be lax on an individual’s
security, privacy and tolerant to a wide range of content. Even today, any user
can build a fictitious profile on almost all such sites.

Cybercitizens
can encourage such sites to pay attention, take action and to be transparent on
actions taken on reported abuse, by publicly showing disapproval on the sites
forums and blogs and prodding their respective governments to enact stringent
laws for content management.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Wikipedia
defines a troll as “someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic
messages in an online community, such as a forum, chat room, or blog, with the
primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise
disrupting normal on-topic discussion”

The main
objective of a troll is to intentionally lure a victim into a pointless or
annoying discussion by responding to rude questions or statements. The troll
amuses himself while the unsuspecting victim is emotionally riled up. Trolls
have their own online troll communities where they boast of their exploits and
rant on sites that have banned them.

Trolls use
anonymous identities and create long term elaborate fictitious profiles not
simply in name but in role, age, disability and sex. Some may be outright rude;
others may act subtly to ruin the online experience of others posing as a
newcomer deliberately making silly errors on a multiplayer game or on use
groups asking stupid questions to derail discussions. The troll has very little
accountability and acts online in a manner he never would in real life.

A troll works
by casting baits, making provocative statements on RIP pages, blogs, Youtube,
chatrooms, forums, and message boards, waiting for a victim to bite the bait
and respond. If the bait is picked up, the troll then begins a vitriolic
discussion with the victim. The Troll is always a winner, having nothing to
lose and all to gain. The victim is always a loser.

Trolls are
usually an online nuisance but there are instances when Trolls cross the line
of rude behavior to criminality. This happens, when trolls post death threats,
cyber bully, publish phone numbers of decent women for sex chats, or post fake
advertisements for sale of goods online.

Why do people
troll? Sometimes to settle personal vendetta’s or further a political agenda,
but in a large number of cases, trolls have no agenda except to derive sadistic
pleasure or to relieve real life frustration on strangers. Trolling could be the
outcome of poor social skills, bad behavior, and lack cyber ethics or according
to physiatrists a mental illness which needs treatments.

Monday, July 22, 2013

LuciusonSecurity
recently took the fifth place in the uKnowKids Parenting Blog of the Year
Contest. uKnowKids is a company which helps parents monitor their children online
to protect them from cyber risks. The product helps parents review their children’s
social network to identify predatory intentions, cyber bullying and to be
informed of new online friends.

As part of the
prize, uKnowKids has been kind enough to offer you, dear reader, 25 totally
free, year-long uKnowKids Premier accounts (social,
mobile and location monitoring) -- you won't even have to put in a credit card!

Sunday, July 21, 2013

The digital
medium allows teenagers to use mobile devices and computers to send sms’s,
mms’s, posts, tweets, pictures, chat and to write blogs. Teenager’s set-up
social networks with friends, acquaintances and even strangers using social
networking platforms like Facebook, twitter, and MySpace. Writing a post online
is akin to shouting in a room full of friends.When rumors, gossips or something hurtful is said about another, in a
spate of anger, envy, or fun, it may trigger a mob reaction where the bully is
actively cheered on by others in the online room emotionally scarring the
victim.

In my Best
of the Web Cyber Safety Videos, we pay tribute to a
video which explains cyber bullying. If this video fails to appear for the lack of shockwave support
in your browser. Go to YouTube “Cyber Bullying
Virus
"

Thursday, July 18, 2013

In a small US town, students mourned the untimely death of
two of their popular teenage schoolmates in a car crash. Condolences poured in
on an online memorial page for the two girls.

Within, twenty-four hours, a man named Carlos issued a dire
warning on the RIP page.

“My
father has three guns. I'm planning on killing him first and putting him in a
dumpster.”

“Then
I'm taking the motor and I'm going in fast. I'm gonna kill hopefully at least
200 before I kill myself. So you want to tell the deputy, I'm on my way.”

“Stop it”
responded an indignant Miss Phillips, a school teacher.

To which Carlos replied “You have been chosen tomorrow at school to receive 1 of my
bullets. The doctors will have to unscrew the bullet from your skull !@$#.”

He added: “I'm killing
200 people minimum at school. I will be on CNN.”

The little town had never experienced dire threats before. Cell
phones rang noisily as worried parents called the school, police and other
parents fearing for the safety of their children. Local authorities rushed in reinforcements
and immediately locked down all the schools in the area. Half of the 6000
students stayed at home behind locked doors. Armed guards patrolled the corridors,
and checked the school bags of every pupil. There was muted conversation in the
hallway as children walked consciously to their classrooms. Nervous teachers
taught to sparsely populated classes. Everyone
was on the edge. Two months ago in another school not far away 20 children and
six adults were shot dead by another student.

Awards

About Me

Security author and passionate blogger @LuciusonSecurity writing on risks that affect Internet users such as cyber crime, defamation, impersonation, privacy and security. Working hard to reduce cyber risks to some of the world's largest businesses. Find me on Twitter @luciuslobo or Linkedin at http://in.linkedin.com/in/luciuslobo